


Sam and Max in: Green-Headed Stepchild

by Caligraphunky



Category: Phineas and Ferb, Sam & Max
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caligraphunky/pseuds/Caligraphunky
Summary: Based on the spine-tingling academic report “A Study of the Correlation Between Super-Intelligence and Abnormal Head Shapes in Prepubescent Development”
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this with the intention of using it to blast a terrible case of writer's block. It was never meant to see the light of day.
> 
> Then I had too much fun with it and decided to post it anyway because I nakedly crave the validation I pretend I'm too good for.
> 
> Who knows if I'll continue this. It's basically an excuse to string together a series of Sam and Max style jokes and it's already gotten completely out of hand, like all the projects I never finish.

“This place is a hellhole, Sam!” said Max, as he watched the smiling faces pass from inside the Desoto. For the past few miles, he’d had his fuzzy white face smashed up against the window making faces he knew, after years of experimentation, would make death row inmates cry. But nobody, not even the children at their most nightmare prone age, reacted with anything but happy laughter and coos over the cute little bunny. “No broken beer bottles on the street, no roving bands of rats making elaborate plots to sneak up through the toilets of the good citizens, and we haven’t seen a single mugging since we got here!”

“Take heed, Max,” said Sam, uncertainty gripping his heart as powerfully as he gripped the steering wheel with his unnatural giant dog fingers. He once again found himself compelled to pull to...what was it again? A complete stop at a red light? It still felt so wrong. “This sorry sight of a city has allowed the plague of civic pride to rampage among the populace unchecked for so long it’s become terminal. Now not even the lowest of low-lives can feel free to exercise their basic right to flick their cigarette butts out the window or vomit on children’s playground swings!”

If New York is the City that Never Sleeps, Danville is The City that Dutifully Gets Eight Hours Every Night and Never Once Forgets to Brush Its Teeth. Neither of the Freelance Police had ever been anywhere with so little human misery and so few opportunities to redress the balance. People smelled good and smiled and said “good morning” to each other on the street, even if they were perfect strangers, with absolutely no fear of that action sparking an impromptu shoot-out. None of the infrastructure had been allowed to deteriorate, even in a minor cosmetic sense, let alone to the point where it could collapse at any moment. The shops didn’t even have bars on the windows!

“Bor-ing!” announced Max, mainly to Sam but also to the universe in general. In both cases, it was meant as a warning. “Are we at least here to fix it?”

“Maybe incidentally!” said Sam, making sure to pull away with a squeal of the tires just to feel a little more at home. “But this case comes straight from The Commissioner himself, as is true of all our cases so I’m not entirely certain why I mentioned it! This city generates constant reports of nefarious contraptions that could conceivably undo the entire foundation of civilization as we know it, only to mysteriously vanish before even 12 hours have elapsed! It’s up to us to determine the identity of this ne’er-do-well and bring them and the source of the disappearances to justice!”

“I knew if you pulled up this city’s skirt you’d find a Glock tucked in her garters!” said Max, hopping up in his seat. “Anything else?”

“Well, there was something about an ‘idiot’s monogram,’ but he had me at ‘nefarious so I didn’t pay much attention!’”

“Oh well. Where should we start looking?” 

Sam reached across the dashboard to pop the glove compartment open. A badly-folded map of Danville spilled out, with two areas marked in scribbly red circles. 

“Our sources narrowed it down to two possible suspects. One lives downtown in a suspiciously-shaped building with a Germanic-sounding name. The other is a quaint suburban household.” Someone honked as Sam sped around them, jabbing his big furry finger at the marked neighborhood. “We’ll start here, it’s seedier.”

“Well then, I know what we’re gonna do today!” Max said as he hopped up to point his finger in a declarative manner, only to jab a hole into the roof’s interior fabric. “I hope the family who lives there has a wine mom! We’ll need easy access to corkscrews for the interrogation!”

“Ah, just siddown, hamsterhead!”

“...Funny,” said Max, “I thought you were gonna say something else.”

* * *

“I just don’t think my heart is in it today, Stace.”

Staring out of her bedroom window hadn’t brought Candice Flynn any closer to determining what Phineas and Ferb were up to this morning, as from what she could tell, her brothers were still in the stage where they sat under the tree and Phineas yattered at Ferb until he’d come up with a tangentially connected project for the day. It was hard to get excited for the day’s bust at that stage anyway, but even Candace had to admit she wasn’t following what she could hear of their conversation.

“You’re kidding,” said Stacy, making an unidentifiable noise behind her. “You’re just getting bored now?”

“Well...yeah!” said Candace, pulling her head in as she realized the noise was probably Stacy rifling through her makeup case. “I mean, how many days is summer vacation? 100 something? Leave my blue moon eyeshadow alone.”

“It’s not even your color!”

“And I can’t believe it’s not boring to Phineas and Ferb yet! I mean, yeah they do some different crazy big thing every day, but it’s like...the same kind of crazy? Phineas lets his train of thought crash into something, they do something huge, it goes away before Mom can see it...It’s so stupid! You know what I’m saying?”

“You want to accessorize with some greens?”

“No, Stacey, focus,” said Candace, “I feel like my whole life is some kind of crazy routine! And I know that’s a contradiction in terms! But everyday, and I mean, every single day, it’s the same thing! They build something ridiculous, I try to show Mom, it vanishes! There is no way that should get boring, and yet, somehow, here I am!”

“Well,” said Stacey, “maybe you need to take the first step to breaking it.”

“Like what?” 

“Like letting me borrow your holographic nail polish?”

Candace narrowed her eyes. “That’s not really breaking any routines.”

“No, but it is what I came over for.”

“You can just take it.”

Stacy stared at her long-time friend, shocked. “Really? Didn’t you save babysitting money like all last summer for this?”

“Last week I finally got the courage to wear it while I was out with Jeremy and...I don’t really understand how this happened, but you know that weird building downtown that kind of looks a little bit like Ferb’s head? I guess some sunlight bounced off it and reflected onto my nails and that’s why Jeremy has to wear sunglasses for the rest of the week.”

“Is that why? I thought he was just being trendy!”

Candace threw her head back and sighed dramatically. “Remember? I called you wondering if he hated me because he’d gone blind?”

“Ooooooh,” said Stacey, who realized by the length and tone of the sigh that she’d stumbled headlong into Candace’s many neuroses. Stacey found that sometimes talking to Candace could be like navigating a jungle in the middle of the night, chewing vines with her teeth. “I thought you just meant blind to your beauty.”

“Stacy…”

“Yeah, OK, we’re off topic anyway.” Stacey tucked the nail polish into her purse. “Look, Candace, if you really want to keep doing this -and we’ll get into the whole ‘why you want to keep doing this’ thing when I have a spare 12 hours- you might as well try something different.”

Candace sunk down on her bed, leaning her chin on her hands. “Like what?”

“The police?”

“No!” Candace whipped around to glare at Stacey, who had taken her place staring out the window. I don’t want to get them _arrested!_ I just want Mom to see what-” 

The sound of screeching tires echoed against the suburban housing development both girls called home, followed by what sounded like a giant pop can being crushed.

“I mean,” said Stacey, “the police are outside. And they just  _ crunched _ your mailbox.

"Someone called the police on my brothers!?"

"...I guess? Does the police department usually hire dogs and-"

_"They brought police dogs!?"_

Candace didn’t wait for the answer to her question, dashing out the door and thumping down the stairs to the backyard.

“No, the police are the dogs. And the rabbit. Also there’s just one dog-” Stacey realized she was standing alone in her best friend’s room. 

“Y’know they might have called them on _you!_ ” she shouted after Candace, before turning to follow her.

* * *

The Flynn-Fletcher backyard was not remarkable in a way that would be obvious to any outside observer. Partly because of the large privacy fence blocking outside observation, but mostly because of its general barren nature. There were no toys or play equipment, lawn furniture, or any sign of a garden. The only real feature of any note was a large tree of no particular genus or species.

Today, however, there was also a six foot dog in a suit and a sharp-toothed naked rabbit peering in between the slats, but as far as any of the neighbors could tell, they weren’t permanent fixtures, so they shrugged and closed their blinds.

“Are we sure they're the right kids, Sam?” said Max in a half-whisper. “They don’t look like our kind of punks.”

“Positive,” said Sam, “those little urchins have the most distinct looks I’ve ever come across, and I went to preschool next to a leaky power plant.”

“I wish Diamonds Are Forever there would keep his head at a three-quarters angle,” said Max, “Every time he moves it’s like staring into the maw of a dead mackerel.”

Just then, a strange sound emanated from the left of the Freelance Police, a sound reminiscent of an extremely offended maraca. Max, unrelated to anything going on, picked his nose.

“...Did they glue that thing together from spare parts after a zoo explosion?”

“That’s no science experiment, Max! That’s a charmingly colored specimen of _ornithorhynchus anatinus_ , or the common duck billed platypus! Endemic to Australia and, oddly, whichever one of the 12 tri-state areas we’re in right now!”

“Well, it looks real cheesed off. Why’s it got a little hat?”

Perry stared at the dog and rabbit, bewildered and not a little bristled at the comments those two had made about his owner, which would have been mean to say about anyone but seemed especially bad to Perry when directed at a ten year old that he loved. Neither Sam, nor Max seemed to pick up on the air of hostility, probably because they had caused it. Slowly, Perry pointed at his hat, then pointed at Sam’s and let out a softer, more questioning chatter.

Sadly, “ _Are you with O.W.C.A?”_ is not a question that translates well from platypus noise to English. Max broke out into a grin. Perry found it instinctively threatening, but he didn’t know if that was due to his agent training or the distinct possibility that this creature couldn’t boil noodles without coming off as threatening.

“Sam, he’s saying he always wanted to be a hat when he grew up! Let’s make his dreams come true!”

“Ease up, knucklehead!” said Sam, turning his attention completely to Max, “Those things have venomous barbs on their feet! A small animal like yourself would melt into an oleaginous slurry with enough of that stuff!”

“Neat...Hey, where’s the platypus?”

Perry had indeed taken the opportunity to vanish when they took their eyes off him. He’d need to speak with Major Monogram about this. Or...just send him a picture of the strangers stalking his owners and let the Major and Carl do all the talking. Whatever.

* * *

Most days, Phineas woke up feeling like he was at the top of the world’s greatest roller coaster, primed and ready to take the ride, and he knew exactly what that felt like because he’d built it himself. Every day was a brand new adventure and most of the time, he was eager to jump in. But this week was...different. Had been different already, what with Jeremy’s retinas getting accidentally fried. And this was after they had postponed the giant magnifying glass Bigfoot-hunting project until the conclusion of ant mating season so they didn’t accidentally burn any young couples! Nobody usually got hurt like that in Danville. Even the mysterious force that typically cleaned up after him and his stepbrother treated his friends and family gently, which Phineas had to admit he appreciated from a mysterious force.

Phineas didn’t believe in bad luck. Bad luck is just good luck in need of a pep talk and a nice warm hug. But something in the general tri-state area was giving him some negative vibes and, though he kept his back against the familiar trunk of the backyard tree, it was throwing him off his game. 

Ferb, meanwhile, had brought a book to read or, as was more often the case, glance at in between the space where Phineas’s rampant imagination seized on a topic and conjured some incredible idea they could spend the day on. Of course, today this was all thin pageantry. Ferb knew very well that something was wrong with his normally irrepressible brother and not being able to pin it down was cause for concern. The closest he could tell was that a second, more invasive and unfriendly mysterious cosmic force was engaging the normal one in some kind of contest, though there was no way to build anything to track that without knowing the variables.

If there was one thing Ferb knew for sure, however, it was that it could not possibly have anything to do with the giant rabbit that odd man in the suit was taking for a walk past the fence.

Probably had nothing to do with the way Candace exploded out the back door and ran towards them screaming their names either. That was a perfectly normal Thursday afternoon.

“Oh, hey sis!” Phineas waved a greeting, only to be interrupted by the way she roughly grabbed his wrist and tried to haul him to his feet.

“You guys have got to get to the panic room now!” she said, reaching out to grab Ferb’s shoulder. “The door has kinda been sticking lately so you have to pull it to the left to get it to unlatch! I’ll make up an alibi for you, just don’t come out until I tell you it’s safe!”

“Whoa, Candace,” Phineas said, alarmed. “What’s going on?”

“You didn’t hear that cop car run over the mailbox!?”

“Oh, I thought that was Buford’s mom letting him drive again.” Phineas lightly tugged at his sister’s hand in the hopes of cueing her to let go but her grip was too tight.

“This is serious, guys! Someone called the cops on you!” She pulled both of her brothers into a tight hug. “You boys would never survive prison!” 

She stopped talking, opened her eyes, and gave Ferb a hard look. He stared back at her. After a moment, Candace amended her statement. 

“Phineas, you’d never survive prison!” But Phineas just laughed and pulled out of her grip, rubbing his wrist where she’d cut off the circulation.

"I'm sure we're not going to prison, Candace!" said Phineas brightly. "We have all our permits on file, and all the forms were notarized! Whatever this is can be cleared up in two seconds!” 

Just then, their dad poked his head out into the back yard.

“Did anyone call for some coppers? It’s just that they’ve gone and parked on top of the mailbox and I need to post the water bill...”

Phineas grinned. “Hmmm. Maybe they’d like it if we worked on their car too! Think we can sup up their cruiser, Phineas? I mean Ferb.”

Ferb’s eyebrows shot up in shock. Phineas put his hands over his mouth.

“Yeah, I dunno either. bro. It just kind of...came out.”

* * *

“I don’t know Sam, I just don’t know.”

“If you hate looking at the little ginger squirt, why haven’t you blinked in the last two minutes?”

“I feel as drawn to him as I am repulsed by him. It’s like...it’s like a cosmic force is pulling me into his orbit.”

“Perhaps his creative loving innocence is simply the exact opposite of your destructive antisocial cynicism, Max. The two of you are yin and yang, matter and antimatter, performing an eternal balancing act until the last quiet applause of entropy dies in the void, leaving you both taking a bow at the end of the universe.”

“I think it’s ‘cause my head’s round and his is pointy. I want one like his! Think about how his mom felt when he came outta her! Like a bee stinging a water balloon!”

“Could be that too. Wouldn’t wanna limit our options! C'mon, let's go ask around the neighborhood. No guttersnipe in a boring suburban wasteland like this one could resist climbing up a giant dangerous structure with a ton of moving parts!”

"Look for the kids with skin grafts, Sam!"

"Way ahead of you, little buddy!"


	2. Interlude of Mayhem Past

Perry could tell that Major Monogram had news. From the size of the file in his hands, it was probably not good. His tiny platypus hands clinched the edge of his console in tense anticipation, even as his beak displayed poker-faced stoicism.

“Well, Agent P,” said the Major as he straightened the papers in his hands, “The good news is that we have an ID on the dog and rabbit. The bad news is...well, that particular dog and that particular rabbit. They’re really kind of their own bad news, actually.”

Someone from off camera, probably Carl, sniffled and whimpered a little. Perry leaned in closer.

“Their names are Sam and Max. Sam is the dog, Max is the rabbit. They call themselves ‘Freelance Police’ though how police can be freelance is anyone’s guess...Says here they’re known for taking cases that are too dangerous, too convoluted, or just too plain weird to be entrusted to a standard police force. They tend to work in large-ish batches of cases every four years or so. Can’t imagine that pays the bills...though apparently they are at least a few decades behind on their rent so, heh, guess it doesn’t.”

Perry made a “hurry up” gesture with his hand. Monogram cleared his throat.

“Yes, anyway, I don’t mind telling you, Agent P, this pattern of behavior would make them far bigger enemies than Doofenshmirtz if they weren’t on the side of good. Apparently, all you have to do to be on the side of good is to occasionally save the world once or twice, regardless of if you were doing it on purpose. Seems like a silly loophole to me, but what can you do.”

That was...yes, Carl was definitely crying behind the camera. Perry, getting a sinking feeling in his gut, let his tail droop in his chair.

“See that, Carl? I told you even Agent P had a tell.”

“I don’t wanna read about Sam and Max anymore, sir!” Carl wailed.

Perry held his finger and spiraled it.  _ What else? _

“I can’t imagine what activity they could be investigating that would lead them to your host family but you should keep them away at all cost! I’ve been reading these case files, and it seems like all they really do while on the job is commit pointlessly cruel and sadistic acts of violence whenever the opportunity presents itself and just sort of hope the case gets solved around them. I don’t even want to  _ know _ if that’s an effective strategy.”

Perry felt dread grip his heart, squeezing like a dog toy on the words  _ cruel and sadistic.  _ Would they find it funny to break Lawrence’s collection of Pinhead Pierre memorabilia? Eat all of Linda’s pies, and then wipe their fur on her nice dresses? 

“I want you to be prepared, Agent P.” Monogram went on, “for what these two are truly capable of.”

Perry nodded, suspecting his nerves of steel would be put to the test.

“The Philippines, 1987. Sam and Max intercepted a cult of volcano worshippers and proceeded to shove every last one of them into the mouth of the active volcano while singing candy commercial jingles from the 1950s. There were no survivors. New York, 1993, Sam and Max confiscated a time bomb set to destroy the lair of a mad scientist. They forgot about it until they arrived at their office, whereupon they carelessly threw the bomb out the window, completely obliterating an unsuspecting city bus in the explosion.”

Maybe Perry had gotten soft this summer, spending all that time on Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s silly schemes to serve desserts early and get rid of pelicans, but he suddenly found his mouth too dry to swallow and too limp to do anything but hang open. He pulled his hat off his head in an attempt to communicate his shock.

“Washington DC, 2006. Sam and Max rigged an emergency election to make Max president of the United States, proceeded to start a civil war on flimsy pretenses, and fired several ballistic missiles because they thought it would be funny, including one at the store owned by a personal friend of theirs.”

Perry, seized with an anxiety he could not control or subdue, started to chew on the brim.

“O.W.C.A. probably should have intervened in that, now that I think about it...OK, uh, North Pole, 2007. Directly responsible for the demonic possession of Santa Claus, and the only action they took to exorcise him was to send him to Hell.”

Perry was certain he’d swallowed some of the lining on his fedora.

“I was prepared to say that at least they weren’t an active danger to children so Phineas and Ferb would be safe but...right here. Little Timmy-Two Teeth. Small child diagnosed with terminal Tourettes syndrome. Sam and Max killed him by dropping him from a two-story robot, after tricking his own father into reactivating it. They then framed him for a lifetime of debauchery in order to damn him to Hell so that they could...Is this right? Ruin a cooking show being filmed there? How petty can you possibly-”

Perry was suddenly on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, not hearing a word out of Monogram. If any  _ one _ of these reports was even remotely accurate then his family was in  _ so much danger _ he didn’t even know where to  _ start. _ The images flooded his mind. 

_ Sam and Max shooting nuclear missiles at one of Phineas and Ferb’s inventions.  _

_ Sam and Max dropping Candace into molten lava.  _

_ Phineas crushed under the heel of a giant robot commended by Sam.  _

_ Ferb being thrown to Satan to fix Hell’s boilers for all eternity while Max cackled.  _

_ The Flynn-Fletcher household going up in flames as the wretched dog and bunny high-fived each other on a successful case. _

“Agent P?” said Carl, wiping his eyes as he poked his head on screen. “Did- did you just  _ eat  _ your fedora?”

Perry had to ask himself a question at that moment. A vital question that would determine the path of his life, and the life of everyone he loved.

_ What does it take to melt nerves of steel?  _

And a second later, he answered it.

_ More than this.  _

Perry pushed himself back up to his webbed feet. He was not going to let the souls of the ones he loved be devoured by these glorified private investigators. That was a promise.

“Was it the one with the buzzsaw in the brim!?” asked Monogram, incredulous. The pain in Perry’s jaw and slight taste of metal in the back of his throat said  _ yes.  _ He coughed and made himself a second promise: that he would try to develop a better anxiety response. He didn’t know he needed one before now, but here they were.

“Well, you know where the extras are. Carl and I will scan these files for any clues to the weaknesses of these so-called Freelance Police. If and when we find anything, we’ll let you know.”

“Can’t another intern handle this, sir!?” said Carl, starting to cry again. “I just got to the part about poor Leonard Steakcharmer!”

“Oh, Carl, he was just a sleazy gambler and they beat him with Yo Mamma jokes! That’s a skip through a daisy field compared to the rest of what they’ve done!”

“Not that!” Carl sobbed. “The part where they tied him up and left him in their dark closet for a year and fed him spiders and congressional documents until he  _ died! _ ” 

Major Monogram starred at the screen for a moment, checked his notes, widened his eyes, and slowly lowered the file. “Yes..well, as you know Agent P, Dr. Doofenshmirtz will be out of commission since you destroyed his Burninator.”

Another sob, then Carl’s weak voice. “He didn’t call it that, sir, it was-”

“ _ Yes, Carl, _ I know that name was taken! Just a giant magnifying glass, anyway, nothing that required a fancy name. As I was saying, you should be able to devote your full attention to this Sam and Max thing.”

Agent P, filled with a determination he had never felt before in his life, saluted the Major, then pointed to the corner of the screen where he’d last seen Carl. 

“Yes, yes, I’ll get him some water or something when we’re done here. There’s one more thing, Agent P. Sam and Max are dispatched by a man known only as the Commissioner. If my intel is right, I think I know who that is.” Major Monogram got a far away look in his eyes, staring out into the middle distance. “My greatest rival in... _ the Academy.”  _

Perry waited for a bit, but it seemed like Major Monogram wasn’t actually going to go anywhere with that...revelation, or whatever it was. A short sharp chatter didn’t seem to snap him out of it either.

Carl blew his nose and stuck his head back in frame. “Sorry, Agent P. I think he was trying to go somewhere with that. It usually takes him a bit to stop flashbacking. I’ll...” Carl held up his own copy of the thick  _ S+M _ file and sighed. “I’ll keep looking and call you when he’s done.”

Agent P turned on his heel and bolted for the exit back to the Flynn-Fletcher yard, hoping it wasn’t on fire right now.


End file.
